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Asetek LCLC Takes Liquid Cooling Mainstream
Posted by
kdawson
on Sat Apr 12, 2008 05:42 PM
from the formerly-hot-hardware dept.
from the formerly-hot-hardware dept.
bigwophh writes "Liquid cooling a PC has traditionally been considered an extreme solution, pursued by enthusiasts trying to squeeze every last bit of performance from their systems. In recent years, however, liquid cooling has moved toward the mainstream, as evidenced by the number of manufacturers producing entry-level, all-in-one kits. These kits are usually easy to install and operate, but at the expense of performance. Asetek's aptly named LCLC (Low Cost Liquid Cooling) may resemble other liquid cooling setups, but it offers a number of features that set it apart. For one, the LCLC is a totally sealed system that comes pre-assembled. Secondly, plastic tubing and a non-toxic, non-flammable liquid are used to overcome evaporation issues, eliminating the need to refill the system. And to further simplify the LCLC, its pump and water block are integrated into a single unit. Considering its relative simplicity, silence, and low cost, the Asetek LCLC performs quite well, besting traditional air coolers by a large margin in some tests."
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Liquid Cooling already mainstream (Score:2, Insightful)
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Asetek makes vapor phase change coolers, Asus makes motherboards and graphics cards. Neither Asus nor Apple makes commercial phase cooling or liquid cooling gear.
You managed to troll the wrong industry entirely!
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Also, I wasn't the original troll. I was responding to a guy that seemed to think that a niche hardware maker was more mainstream than Apple.
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For those of you who don't like stop & go traf (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.hothardware.com/printarticle.aspx?articleid=1128 [hothardware.com]
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Ummmmm (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ummmmm (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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What I thought was fluid was actually UV dye that had permeated the silicone tubing from the cooling solution. Additionally, when I stripped the system, all the tubing
Liquid cooling for datacentres? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Liquid cooling for datacentres? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are a few things that come to mind:
Parent
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I have systems hosted in 3 different DCs, 3 different companies. All of them raised their rates in the last year by 20-30% in one way or another. One DC includes the electricity in your flat monthly bill, the only incremental charge in that DC is bandwidth (IE you get 100GB of transfer, if you go over its some dollars per GB), they raised their flat rate 20%, citing higher electricity costs.
The other 2 DCs provide metered electricit
Re:Liquid cooling for datacentres? (Score:5, Insightful)
-Free (both source and disposal)
-Non-conductive
-Non-corrosive
-Lightweight
-Will not undergo phase change under typical or emergency server conditions (think water>steam)
-Cooling air does not need to be kept separate from breathing air, unlike water, which must be kept completely separate from potable water
Imagine the worst-case scenario concerning a coolant failure WRT water vs air:
-Water: flood server room/short-circuit moboard or power backplane/cooling block must be replaced (labor)
-Air: Cause processor to scale down clock speed
I don't think water/oil cooling is ready for mainstream data farm applications quite yet. I also think that future processors will use technology that isn't nearly as hot and wasteful as what we use now, making water cooling a moot point.
-b
Parent
Re:Liquid cooling for datacentres? (Score:5, Informative)
Air is one of the most corrosive substances there is. Specifically, the oxygen in the air is. It just takes time. Normally, a server won't be in operation long enough for this kind of corrosion to happen, especially if it uses gold-plated contacts, but it will happen.
Air is less corrosive. But depending on the liquid that's in use in a liquid cooling rig, it usually isn't corrosive or dangerous to a computer anyway. Liquid cooling rigs are usually an oil such as mineral oil or an alcohol like propanol, neither of which is particularly harmful to electronics.
Also... while it's a technicality, air *is* conductive. It just has a very high impedance. It *will* conduct electricity, and I'm pretty near certain you've seen it happen: it's called lightening.
Finally... if your server is running hot enough that mineral oil is boiling off, you've got more serious things to worry about than that. (its boiling point varies, based on the grade, between 260-330'C -- http://www.jtbaker.com/msds/englishhtml/M7700.htm [jtbaker.com] )
Parent
Re:Liquid cooling for datacentres? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want to get all technical about it, you're basically wrong. The resistivity of air is exceedingly high. However, like all insulators, it has a breakdown strength, and at electric field strengths beyond that, the conduction mode changes. It's not simply a very high value resistor -- nonconducting air and conducting air are two very different states, which is the reason lightning happens. The air doesn't conduct, allowing the charge to build higher and higher, until the field is strong enough that breakdown begins.
For materials with resistivity as high as air in its normal state, it's not reasonable to call them conducting except under the most extreme conditions. Typical resistance values for air paths found in computers would be on the order of petaohms. While there is some sense in which a petaohm resistor conducts, the cases where that is relevant are so vanishingly rare that it is far more productive to the discussion to simply say it doesn't conduct.
This is one of those cases. Claiming that air is conductive is detrimental to the discussion at best.
Parent
think big - the heat is still there in the room (Score:2)
Heat Pump? (Score:2)
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With the caveat that thermodynamics scares and confuses me, if you have a bunch of heat coming out of the servers' water-coolers, couldn't you pipe that into a heat pump and recover some cooling energy or even electricity?
Yes. Now, THAT would be smart. Eliminate the cost of water heaters, augment winter HVAC bills, etc. Steam power plants use "waste" energy, the heat left over in the water after it runs the main turbines, to preheat the water going into the boiler. There's usually heat left over after THAT, and it is at a good temp for use in the power plant building itself. Any heat sent back out to the environment is wasted, and wasted energy = wasted $$.
Now, if it's enough wasted energy to warrant the cost of ca
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You do have a good point though, use of a non conductive oil, that was cooled against water pipes, would mean the servers are just as safe as they are at the moment.
Well, maybe. (Score:2)
Re:Liquid cooling for datacentres? (Score:5, Informative)
1. Can be a LOT quieter than normal air cooling.
2. Allows for heat removal with a much smaller heat exchange unit on the heat source.
3. Allows for heat transfer to a location less affected be the excess heat being dumped (such as outside a case) instead of just dumping the heat in the immediate vicinity of either the item being cooled or near other components affected by heat.
There are other reasons, but these alone are more than enough. Did you not know these, or were you just trolling?
Parent
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2. No benefit for any practical application. Definitely makes no difference in a data center.
3. Does not affect the cooling costs of a data center in the slightest.
Nothing about water cooling will reduce the cooling and energy costs of a data center IN THE SLIGHTEST. You're doing a lot of magical thinking, with NO experience in the subject.
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Put a datacenter 300 ft underground, and see how far simple air cooling gets you. In that case, there MUST be a way to dump the heat that doesn't involve simply blowing air around. If it works for you, that's fine. But attem
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Unless your datacenter is collocating with a (large) laundromat, there just isn't that much demand for hot water at a datacenter. No laundry, no showers, little to no cooking.
Someone check my numbers.
Tap water = 7 degrees C.
Water heater hot water = 50 C
Also from the article, it doesn't work (Score:2, Insightful)
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How so? They show that it's quieter and more effective than stock cooling, and significantly quieter than an aftermarket air cooling solution. What exactly are you looking for then? You gotta be more specific than just a completely unsupported criticism that doesn't even reflect the test results, let alone explain your personal criteria.
Here, try somet
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Ok so it's marginally quieter. As for its absolute cooling power it's on par with whatever air cooled unit you can get today with a lot less complexity. All in all that's pretty weak justification. If that's your definition of "it works well" then you clearly care about noise above all other criteria. There are probably better ways to make your PC quieter than this.
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You don't have to be an entirely patronizing asshole.
It's the internet, so actually I do (heh).
But you are still arguing from a position lacking in factual information. Water cooling can be almost completely silent, and can remain so even when cooling hardware that would otherwise require very loud fans for conventional air cooling.
This does not even address the additional cooling requirements seen in overclocking, small form factor, or otherwise special use equipment. A water cooled HTPC for example typically has to trade off performance for noise, as hig
"mainstream" (Score:2)
I guess this is one of those phrases, like "the Year of Linux on Desktop," that we'll hear ad infinitum.
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If so, I don't see how that could be considered mainstream. Perhaps I misunderstand the term, but to me it means it is used on many different computers, not just one.
Perhaps 'mainstream' is valid in this case because the one model sold a lot? I don't think that fits with my uderstanding of the word, but it's at least debatable, I suppose.
Mainstream (Score:2)
Necessity is the mother of invention (Score:2)
This is kind of inevitable, and IMHO overdue. Monolithic heat sinks and fans the size of jet engine intakes have been a pain in the arse for top of the range gaming machines for years. Also, I don't know about anyone else, but the air cooling of my computer is a depressingly efficient mechanism for sucking dust and fluff into the computer and keeping it there.
Shuttle PCs have had this for years (Score:2)
Shuttle PCs have had a heat-pipe and heat exchanger liquid cooling system for years. This made possible their little "breadbox" systems.
Uh...Johnny-Come-Lately (Score:2)
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Like the PVC drainpipes in modern houses?
Like the insulation on your home's wiring?
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